Goodreads: An Amazon Acquisition

After working in the publishing industry for so many years, I've learned that there's sadly a good bit of passive aggression going on behind the scenes--as it does in every industry, really. But sometimes, publishing's particular brand of rivalry is more public than most.

Like today's announcement that Amazon has purchased Goodreads, for example.

Forbes.com tells us more:

After two years of stops and starts, Bookish, the book discovery and e-commerce website co-owned by three of the world’s biggest publishers, finally opened for business in February. Seven weeks later, Amazon has acquired Goodreads, the leading book-centric social network. 

Coincidence? 

Of course, with 16 million members, San Francisco-based Goodreads is a logical enough acquisition target for the e-tailer. (The sale price hasn’t been disclosed but seems likely to have been in the low eight digits; according to Crunchbase, Goodreads had raised a total of $2.75 million in funding.) 

The two sites aren’t mirror images of each other. In particular, as Laura Hazard Owen explains, Amazon and Goodreads make recommendations based on something called “collaborative filtering,” which factors in a user’s past activity and the behavior of similar users. Lacking Amazon’s servers full of data, Bookish — which is backed by Penguin, Hachette and Simon & Schuster — bases its recommendations more on content analysis. Bookish also lacks Goodreads’ social layer. 

Still, the similarities are sufficient that when Bookish launched in February, a Wired writer dubbed it “the love child of Goodreads and Amazon.” 

One thing to keep an eye on is whether an Amazon-owned Goodreads will continue to drive customers to other retailers. In 2011, the site stopped using Amazon’s API, saying the terms of use were too restrictive – in particular the requirement that all product links go to Amazon rather than to other retailers. 

In a blog post announcing the sale, Goodreads founder Otis Chandler suggested nothing is going to change, at least immediately: “Amazon supports us continuing to grow our vision as an independent entity, under the Goodreads brand and with our unique culture.” 

Obviously, Amazon would rather not send potential book buyers to its competitors. But with a new anti-trust lawsuit accusing it (and the six biggest publishers) of wielding too much control over the e-book market, this isn’t the time to be seen as acting like a monopoly. 

See the original post HERE

Oh, publishing...what will you come up with next?